Why (Global) Villages Suck

Think about that term, "global village," it sounds warm and fuzzy, doesn't it? We all like villages, there's Santa's Village in Bracebridge, Value Village to buy your hipster skinny pants for $2, and the Village People who'll tell you where you can hang out with all the boys.

I think villages though are overrated. I think villages (and indeed all smaller centers, be they "hamlets," "corners," or "towns") are overrated for reasons that are now becoming apparent in the aforementioned global village. In a smaller center, everyone knows what everyone else is doing and what everyone else is saying. Harper (or at least his lackey, Stephen Taylor) is freaking out that his minions are saying things on Facebook that might somehow reflect badly on his government.

Until Facebook (which IDs everyone by their real name) the internet was far more akin to a metropolis than it was to a village. You could make up a name and commit the digital equivalent of flipping off another city-dweller in traffic. Your blog/myspace/whatever was the political/musical/cultural equivalent of yelling "nice turn-signal use, asshole!" out the car window on a crowded street. No one would know who you were or what you did.

Now your every Facebook utterance is traceable to you. It's a village, and now we are finding the idiots.